Put-In in the Docks of Erie and Syrian Bays

On September 10, 1813, after winning the Battle of Lake Erie at Put-In-Bay, Ohio, thus vanquishing the British Royal Navy from the Great Lakes in the War of 1812, U.S. Commander Oliver Hazard Perry declared: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

200 years later, Vladamir Putin’s Russian Navy guards Syria’s bays for Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry previously met Bashar al-Assad and declared him a “reformer”. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Putin and declared a “re-set” before Commander-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama met Putin-puppet Dmitry Medvedev and declared post-election strategic and nuclear arsenal-surrender “flexibility”; even as he begged to meet with Iran’s mullahs as they mowed down liberty-seeking youth in the streets.

When Obama Administration officials meet enemies of the United States, they don’t even recognize them as such, much less defeat them. On 9/11/2012 in Benghazi, four Americans met their death at the hands of al Qaeda but the only enemy President Obama and Secretary Clinton saw was the producer of an anti-Prophet of Islam movie-producer. It reminds of soon after al Qaeda’s 9/11/2001 attacks on the U.S. homeland, when Hillary’s husband famously asked: “Why do they hate us?” This gang can’t see straight much less shoot straight, unless the enemies they sight are Republican political or constitutional ones; and only then does IRS meet and make them theirs.

No Commander Perrys, these modern day Democrats. But while Obama and the the Left since Woodrow Wilson hold the founding document he was instrumental in drafting to replace the Articles of Confederation and its weak executive power, President James Madison did share enemy-seeking vision problems with the former of his Democratic Party successors to the office.

Madison, the Father of the Constitution before being elected (and re-elected) the 4th President of the United States, sought and received a declaration of war from Congress after stumbling into the War of 1812. United States relations with Great Britain had deteriorated exponentially into a trade embargo after Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison defeated a confederacy of Native American tribes led by Shawnee leader Tecumseh in the November 7, 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. But American public opinion blamed the violence at the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers on British interference thus leading to war six months later.

President Madison’s miscalculations led to the immediate seizure of Lake Erie (as well as the fall of Detroit and effective control of the entire Great Lakes region) and the eventual seizure and burning of the White House by British naval and land forces. But less than 23 months later, thanks to his Commander Perry’s capture, near Put-In-Bay, Ohio, of the six Royal Navy vessels controlling Lake Erie, American sovereignty was returned to its northern border. All that remained to finally secure American independence from the British Empire was Francis Scott Key’s sighting of the Star Spangled Banner at Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore, General Andrew Jackson’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.

America used to fight and win wars to total victory, even when we didn’t quite get the enemies right!

But since General George Patton, poised to prevent an Iron Communist Curtain from enslaving eastern Europe after our defeat of Nazi Germany, was denied the opportunity by a war weary President Harry Truman. A few years later that same president would deny that the “police action” on the Korean peninsula was a “war” and prohibited General Douglas MacArthur the opportunity to vanquish the Red Chinese. Not winning “non-wars” became a bad habit for Democrats in hot ones like Vietnam and cold ones in Tehran and Moscow.

Moreover, when President Ronald Reagan was about the business of re-building the Arsenal of Democracy that Democrats had hollowed out, Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry and other Democrats tried to undermine his efforts by supporting Gorbachev’s nuclear freeze and Sandinistas in Nicaragua. But even after Reagan got the hostages in Iran released, freed Grenada, disabled Ghadafy, and vanquished the USSR via peace through strength, Democrats still hadn’t shed their French-like surrender monkey business.

President Obama couldn’t wait to:

Make sure no American footprint remained in a post-surge Iraq, where Americans’ red blood led to regular purple-fingered elections;

Re-establish diplomatic relations with Butcher Bashar in Syria;

Boost the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; and

Signal our retreat in Afghanistan after a surge.

Yet now, this Democrat appeaser of evil wants Republicans to bail him out of loose red-line talk about WMDs by bombing Damascus and arming al Qaeda rebels in Syria, when he cared not a whit about American lives killed by al Qaeda in Benghazi? I think not.

President Madison aided and abetted the stumbling of a young America into a dangerous redux of an American Revolution that had been won 31 years earlier at Yorktown. But at least he had respect for the Constitution and shared American values that insisted he unleash more than one man with courage, Commander Perry and General Jackson, who could see enemies and make them ours.

Sadly, when President Obama speaks to the nation to the nation from the Oval Office tomorrow for only the second time, and coincidentally on the 200th anniversary of Commander Perry’s victory in the Battle of Lake, we will not be able to trust our present Commander in Chief not to surrender the gains of wars won, even if he were to finally see our enemies for who they are. But he will let predecessors, in what he dubs “Bush-Lied”eras, gather intel in wars he deems “illegal” in order that he can claim Navy Seal courage as his own in killing Osama bin Ladens or in push-button drone-targeting.